Control the pandemic and we control the economy

The United States recently passed 750,000 Covid-related deaths, and that number barely caused a blip on the national radar. I mean, what's a few hundred thousand deaths scattered across a nation of 330 million? 

It's much easier to get worked up over a fertility clinic in California mixing up the infants of two couples, and their shared stories of pain and anger. The difference in news coverage reveals most of what we need to know about how news works and how the media finds content.

Most experts now say that herd immunity will never be achieved, so we might just need to learn to live with the disease, much as we have learned to live with colds. We get a cold but that will not our last one, most likely, despite our systems now being able to defend against ONE particular virus. There will always be another.

The economy and the pandemic seem closely interrelated, with improvement in one likely to produce improvement in the other. President Biden's approval ratings are in the tank, though I have no idea what that really means beyond people are generally pissed and depressed and anxious.

The nonvaccinated continue to die in much larger numbers than the vaccinated, and people who have had the virus and recovered are nearly nine times as likely as the vaccinated to be hospitalized. 

Vaccine mandates produce almost a knee jerk response from many people. How dare any government require me to submit to a shot in the arm? Heck, say some, I'm not anti-science and not a kook. I just demand sovereignty over my own body.

But the mandates force people to make a decision. Is my current job worth sacrificing my libertarian principles by getting vaccinated, allowing me to continue complaining about the damn government while making myself a bit less likely to face serious illness? Or is the trade-off just too much? 

"Give me liberty or give me death!"

In the short term, mandates will damage the ratings of the government. In the long term, doing the right thing rarely produces lasting damage... and we may eventually just shrug over long-established mandates.

Being forced to wear a seatbelt produced all sorts of wacky arguments 50 years ago. "But I will drown in the creek I have crashed into if the belt gets stuck." Just ignore the fact that driving into water is quite rare and that the trapped-by-seatbelt scenario mostly happens on TV. 

For most of us, buckling our seatbelt is automatic and it never occurs to us that we are sacrificing any freedoms in doing so. 

We would be amused to find a candidate for office basing a campaign on opposition to seatbelt laws. 

When five percent of some town's police force refuses a vaccine mandate, my view is to simply fire them. Their choice should be respected, but society's needs are more important. If a town finds itself with five percent fewer police officers for some time, that's just the price of taking care of all our neighbors.

It really won't take much time for people's need for gainful employment to sort all this out. And public service employees who clearly express antagonism toward the public? 

See ya.